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In the dog world, cooperative care is a concept that is really catching on. There’s an entire “fear free” movement, and a certification for trainers, vets, vet techs and motivated owners. The horse world, though, lags behind the dog world in terms of an awareness of the science of learning and fully understanding the components of animal-friendly practices. Because most of the focus of the fear free movement is on small animals, it’s very satisfying to develop fear free protocols for horses.

My mare, Sistine, a mustang rescued from a kill pen, is the perfect horse for this work,

Sistine Seraphim

because of her previous bad handling. Because she is afraid of all traditional handling, she is helping me to develop new ways to approach husbandry and vet care. I don’t know for sure what happened in her earlier life: if she was ever fully tame, if she was tamed well but mistreated later or a little of both. I do know she ended up starving and about to ship for slaughter, so it’s safe to assume there was little to no attention given to her emotional states during training. What that means for us today is that I have a very large mare (easily 1350 lbs) who is afraid of: halters, ropes, basic handling, people and objects. We desperately needed to build a relationship, but I needed to approach it creatively.

For most horse husbandry and vet protocols, the base behavior is “stand still and don’t move.” It sounds easy enough until you are staring down the lead rope at a thousand pound animal who is nervous and doesn’t have the coping skills to self-soothe and stand still at the same time. Fights are born, the chain is tightened over the nose and the horse learns that the vet predicts stress.

The other problem is that “stand still and don’t move” is passive. When your only job is to do nothing, it’s really natural to worry about what everyone else is doing. It enhances fear. It’s far easier to be involved in an active behavior so that your mind has a directed focus separate from the procedure being performed. Make sense?
In order to give Sistine an active focus WHILE standing still, I taught her to touch a jolly ball with her lips for grain. At first she just needed to learn to touch the ball at all, because she was nervous of any objects humans held in their hands. Once she learned to touch the ball with confidence, I taught her to touch the ball continuously, with duration. Once she understood both of those concepts, I went through a few sessions to teach her to do the same behaviors with a ball hanging on a post rather than in my hands. And once she could remain targeted on her ball with duration on the post, I introduced the idea that I would touch HER while she was touching the ball. Below is some short video of our process:

In the above video, you can see Sistine learning to target her ball on a post. You can see by all her extra head movements, and the fact that I need to put my hand on the ball to help cue her, that she has some anxiety about touching the ball in a new context. As the videos progress, you can see these extra movements resolve.

In the above video, you can see me introducing Sistine to the idea that I am going to initiate touch while she targets her ball. The first two repetitions are nice, but you can observe that she hesitates to put her nose back on the ball on the third repetition, and when she does and I touch her, she turns her neck away. I leave my hand out, which is a mistake, I should have taken it away and just clicked her for returning to the ball. Because this repetition was too hard for her and elicited signals of stress and body irritation (lean away, head shake, tail flip), I go back to re-establishing duration at the ball.

The next video is after a few more sessions. You will easily see Sistine is more relaxed, more eager to get to the ball and all the stress behaviors – looking away, waiting awhile to walk back to the ball, tail swishes – have all disappeared. I am able to touch her while she maintains contact with her target. In addition, it’s windy and I have two other trainers observing, normally something that causes Sistine concern. Watch below:

It’s easy to see that by giving Sistine an active focus, she is able to stay quite calm when she would otherwise be afraid. Over time I will be able to listen to her heart, take her temperature, rehearse vaccinations and needle sticks. There’s a process to introducing each novel procedure, but the familiarity of the ball will serve to anchor Sistine in place and provide a sense of safety.

Teaching a nose target/ball target is a fairly simple procedure, even for newer trainers. Considering that a study out of the U.K. found that being a horse veterinarian is more dangerous than even being a firefighter, it would seem logical that we would be looking for new ways to train horses to relax and be less fearful during procedures. With a nose target, the moment Sistine removes her lips from the target, I stop whatever I am doing – brushing, sliding down her neck for a jugular stick, brushing her mane. When she puts her nose back on the ball target, I click and reinforce. In this way, she can say “no” to anything that makes her uncomfortable by just taking her nose off the ball. Rather than run off, kick, or struggle, she can just back up half an inch. And, because I take her at her word, she can relax and go quickly back to her nose target behavior. It keeps emotional spikes low and relaxation high. That is the place where safety lies.
As we move toward the next century, our consciousness about what comprises humane care for animals will continue to evolve. I suspect that in the near future, cooperative care and the fear free movement will move into the mainstream, rather than just the sidelines. Medical care for any species holds the potential to be stressful, painful and scary. With horse’s size compared to ours, restraint isn’t always the smartest or safest choice. Teaching them how to partner in their own care, so they can be as fear free as possible, is the ethical choice for horse and human lives. I am grateful for and to Sistine for being an integral part of helping develop these protocols for everyone.

Earlier this winter, I did a lot of hiking out in the 100 or so acres behind our farm. There was plenty of soft snow and it wasn’t demanding on cold muscles like accurate arena work. It was a good way to get the blood flowing and as a bonus, I could wear gloves when I fed my horses and while I hiked. I didn’t need extra dexterity on the reins like I do in-hand or under saddle. As we hiked, technically on a “trail ride” as the horses and I were off property, moving in a relative line, I started to think about what a trail ride really is, to the horse, how many owners struggle with taking their horse out alone and what we can take from our daily work to make riding-out possible, safe and fun.

I was very interested in observing the general change in my horses’ arousal levels as we left our property. All of my horses eagerly volunteer to come out and learn, and all of them are used to working alone, without any other horses. But leaving the home property adds a level of unfamiliarity and a much larger physical distance from the actual herd. Because I am not interested in suppression or force as a tool for controlling behavior, my horses were totally at liberty so I would have an honest read on whether or not they wanted to come along. (Our farm is very secluded, so even if my horses were to go back home on their own, there is really no traffic or road to cross. Other people might not have this set up and will need to make adjustments to ensure safety for their horses.)

Initially, I took my horses two at a time out hiking. I knew having two together would easily increase relaxation, and I wanted to take advantage of creating positive initial experiences. I had my wife or other training friends come along and each of us was responsible for one horse.

Dragon, Aesop and Sara out on an early winter hike.

With two horses, the hikes were easy and they both stayed quite relaxed, their thresholds nearly identical to when we trained on property. Awesome! But, as we neared home, maybe the last 50 yards or so, they would speed up and canter back into view of the other horses and our barn. It improved with every hike, until it was only the last ten feet as the trail switched from the field to our property, but it was still anxiety. Small things can always turn into big things, so better to address them early. The horses were letting me know where the holes were in their emotional confidence.

The next time I brought Dragon and Aesop into the field, I had a new plan based on what I had observed. Before I took them out, I set up the field with objects I use in training sessions in the indoor arena. I dragged out mounting blocks, some large buckets I use to mark off circles when we longe at liberty, as well as a large plastic spool I got at a dog training store.

My well-loved mounting block.

I set these things up at the entrance to the field, so they were some of the very first and very last things we encountered as we hiked. As we entered the field the first time with the object set up, the change in the horses was measurable. They had felt relaxed before, but now they eagerly walked up to the familiar objects, lining up with the mounting blocks, sometimes moving out ahead to reach an object first and then wait for me to catch up and reinforce. They were focused and thoughtful.

Aesop lining up at the bucket for Sam.

It became very clear to me very quickly, that adding in objects that already had conditioned associations with them and deep reinforcement histories allowed the horses to access their best, most responsive selves immediately. Adding the objects onto our trail walks was like when we got to use our notes for tests in school: everything felt easy and suddenly test taking wasn’t nerve wracking in the least!

Dragon at the mounting block, offering stillness and his back. Lovely!

The objects you use in your everyday training sessions: mounting blocks, traffic cones to mark off circles, and buckets to practice turning around are more than just mundane objects. They become a deep and integral piece of the learning process. What functions do they serve?

They cue you to stop and ask for a certain behavior from your horse. These objects help order and pattern your training sessions. Trail walks and rides can be long and continuous. Once people start, they rarely stop, which can lead to both the horse or human becoming overfaced as they steadily move into uncharted territory. Using objects along your path can break up the pressure to go, go, go and provide better context for you and your horse.

They become secondary reinforcers to your horse. Even though these objects are neutral initially, over time, their presence becomes reinforcing to your horse because they so often lead to actual reinforcement. This classical conditioning will help your horse to feel relaxed and eager because working around these objects always predicts good things!

These objects also cue your horses for certain operant behaviors. If you have done a solid job using objects as targets and context cues in your foundation work with your horse (stand on a mat, line up at a mounting block, trot to the outside of cones, touch your nose to a jolly ball), you have a whole lexicon of visual cues you can take with you on the trail or in new environments. Rather than abandoning all of the familiar and well learned objects, bring them into your trail ride or new environments to help your horse be right!

A short trail ride alone, once we were comfortable thanks to our object work. Heading back toward a mounting block, not pictured.

Riding object to object with Aesop out in the fields.

When we work in arenas, we never ask our horses to go any further from home than they are when they enter the arena. It’s a static space, controlled and safe. But when we head out onto the trail, not only is it an unpredictable environment in terms of wildlife, geographical variation and unfamiliarity; it also takes our horses continually further from home and their herd mates. That’s pretty challenging. Getting our horses used to learning and working in novel environments should be approached thoughtfully and with attention to detail. Intentionally harnessing the power of familiar objects with deep reinforcement histories allows our horses immediate relaxation and context in what can be a fear-inducing situation. It’s just good training.

Do you enjoy reading Spellbound? Head on over to my Patreon page to support me continuing to create stellar content AND see what sort of comprehensive educational materials I have in the works! You will find extra content, my other blog and patron-only rewards there.

When I started writing Spellbound years ago, it was more of a way to hold myself accountable to regular work and to have an online journal available to me of my horses’ training. But, somewhere along the way it grew into something far larger and more universal. Now, Spellbound is a place where I share positive reinforcement concepts, training progressions and mechanical skills with a community of progressive horse people. I deeply enjoy putting together material; I learn a lot through it and I’m delighted when I learn something I’ve written has helped others find their way with their own horse. I want to spend more time creating material, but to do that, I need to find a way to be paid.
Luckily, there’s an amazing site called Patreon that allows people who are creating content to be paid monthly by their supporters. It’s a fairly new concept, but it works off of the old model of a patron who supported an artist. Except, rather than only one very rich patron, Patreon works off of many regular people pledging small amounts that add up to really substantial support. I’ve created a page for myself and I’m hoping you will join me on my journey by pledging! I’ve set some serious goals for myself and for what I want to create.
In addition to monthly blogs, I will be rolling out monthly “Try this at home” videos that offer direct instruction to readers who would like to teach behaviors and concepts to their horses at home. These videos will pull directly from my blogs so that you can work on exercises that lay the foundation for or are the same as what I am working on here.
Long term, I am at work on a deep, foundation-level horse course. The course will combine essential skills with a deeper look into emotional thresholds and basic biomechanics. Positive reinforcement, understanding horse behavior and teaching correct biomechanics are the golden ring of a happy AND sound horse and I want to put them together for you, the way I wish they had been for me. Becoming a patron supports me on this quest!
I am so excited to be at this new and deeply creative stage in my life. With everyone’s support, I will be able to pursue this work long-term, moving toward longer and more enduring forms as well as diving more thoroughly into Spellbound itself. Thank you for being a reader and I hope to see you on my Patreon page!

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Last year I went to an incredible, multiple day biomechanics lecture series with Jillian Kreinbring of JK Inspired. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Jillian is both an academic and a practiced horsewoman. While pursuing her masters degree in equine movement, posture and muscle development at The University of Wisconsin Madison, Jillian studied with Dr. Hillary Clayton, Dr. Sara Wyche, Dr. Nancy Nicholson, as well as Dr. Deb Bennett. In her life as a trainer and rider, Jillian has studied with Peggy Cummings, Mark Russell, Stephanie Millham and Manolo Mendez, among many others. While it is difficult to parse out one piece of information from her lecture that was the most valuable, what was the most empowering for me and a powerful baseline to begin the study of biomechanics with, was the concept of overall balance.

Horse people are forever debating over the correctness or lack of correctness of horses in movement, debating the conformation of horses standing still and debating the correctness of movement of videos of horses in training at home or competition. Ask ten people what they see and you will get ten different answers. Often, what I see written out in discussion is a very fragmented knowledge of movement and a fidelity to small, peripheral details that can’t ever explain or acknowledge the whole. People “know” toe-flicking is bad, nose behind the vertical is bad or a dropped back is bad. Or matching angles in the trot is good, head in front of the vertical is good and a raised back is good. But, often, we are looking from the edges into the center, rather from the center out to the edges. Really looking at a whole horse, their body and balance together is a huge subject and it’s hard. So, for lots of us, there are small things we know are healthy or unhealthy for the horse, but the larger picture eludes us. Ask us to break it down and we find we can’t speak about it as clearly as we’d like. And this isn’t for no reason. Solid information is difficult to find. Many riding instructors and trainers can’t even tell you why certain postures are good or bad, just that they are. I remember watching the summer Olympics in 2000 and being so moved by the dressage and then wondering, “Who is moving the best? Who would I pick to win?” and the truth was, I had no idea. I didn’t have the criteria to make an informed choice. (Now of course, I don’t look to sport dressage for healthy, beautiful movement, but it illustrates my point.)

The particular beauty of biomechanics is that they aren’t subject to opinion. Biomechanics give us consistent landmarks we can use to understand how our horses are moving. They help us draw our maps of balance and to inform our work with our own horses regardless of our goals or individual discipline.

So let’s begin.

For starters, every horse has two general balances: their static balance and their dynamic balance. Their static balance is their balance when they are standing still and their dynamic balance is their balance when their body organizes into movement. Add a rider and the horse’s dynamic balance is influenced significantly.
Whether you are measuring your horse’s static balance or dynamic balance, you measure it the exact same way, by the relationship between two points on their spine; this value is your horse’s overall balance.
To measure your horse’s overall balance: draw a straight line from cervical vertebrae 5 (c5) to the core of the lumbar-sacral joint, essentially, where the spine transitions from the low back into the sacrum. The slope of this line tells you how your horse carries his weight.
Let’s look at these two points on a real horse:

Hocus Pocus: Measuring overall balance. He is basically level with the ground.

For a horse to be adept at carrying weight (a rider), you want your line to be no more than four inches off the horizontal, up or down. More than that and helping them organize into healthy movement is going to be more difficult. As you can see from the photo above, Hocus Pocus is a fairly level horse.

Below is a picture of another horse, whose overall balance is more downhill:

The overall balance of this horse is more downhill. It will be harder for him to organize his body and carry a rider in a way that is not damaging for him.

Once you’ve assessed your horse’s static balance, then it’s time to get out the video camera and assess your horse’s overall balance when ridden. If you find your horse is even more downhill when you ride, don’t panic! It’s very common and once you know what you are looking at and looking for, you can begin to change. Let’s look at how Hocus Pocus was ridden before he came to Idle Moon Farm:

When you compare this picture of him in movement, you can see that his overall balance under a rider is more downhill than his overall balance when standing. Over time, this will cause wear and tear on his joints, atrophy his back muscles (already happened), make him more susceptible to injury and actually tighten his whole chest leaving less room for his heart and lungs. Let’s compare to his static balance picture.

A comparison of overall balance. Top: static, bottom:ridden.

Because Hocus was bumping into the bridle, he self-protected by dropping his back and pushing the base of his neck down into his chest, compressing his spine to avoid discomfort as much as possible. While he is still a work in progress, below is a photo of Hocus learning to carry himself in a new posture.

Although the line from his lumbar-sacral core to his C5 is still downhill, it’s now only about an inch downhill, rather than 4. Small improvements are cause for celebration: small changes rehearsed daily lead to large changes over time. Let’s compare this picture to his other ridden picture:

A comparison of overall ridden balance. Old life, top. At Idle Moon, bottom. Notice the difference in the angle of the line.

He’s definitely improving, and that’s wonderful. But, because his back is still weak, riding is hard. Ideally, when I train Hocus, I can influence his posture to be more uphill than his overall balance when standing still. For him, this is only possible in-hand right now. So, that means, I work him primarily in-hand and ride once or twice a week for very short rides, stopping before he gets tired and finishing in-hand.

Hocus Pocus in elementary balance in-hand.

In this last photo, you can see that the line between C5 and the core of the LS joint is completely level; this is considered elementary balance. So, the overall balance in this picture is an elementary balance. Helping your horse into elementary balance in movement is a huge accomplishment and the first touchstone on the road to collection. Collection is something that happens in phases; this is phase one. Being strong enough to maintain an elementary balance through all three gaits, with a rider, could take anywhere from 3 months to a year, depending on the horse and his fitness. Since Hocus’s back was so atrophied when he came to me, he will spend this year working in elementary balance through all his gaits, until he is strong enough to lift from the base of his neck and maintain a healthier posture consistently. Learning to engage the muscles that make elementary balance possible takes time and repetition.We will work often in-hand and add in lateral work for flexibility and straightness.

When we understand how to measure overall balance using actual points on the horse’s spine, we can begin to build criteria for understanding healthy, weight-bearing movement. Without bony landmarks we can get stuck using outlines, old ideas or other peripheral information that is not sufficient to understand the whole of our horse. Most damage to horses is done inadvertently, but it is damage just the same. Moving forward into the 21st century with our horses, an understanding of healthy biomechanics and alignment is necessary in order to be true advocates for the animals we love.
To learn more about Jillian Kreinbring or attend one of her biomechanics lecture series, check out www.jilliankreinbringinspired.com

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One of the basic tenets in my work is: “Don’t steal from the horse’s flight response.” It means that even though it’s easy to get a horse to move off at a trot or a canter by shaking a whip or tossing a line, it routes through an emotional system created for survival and I don’t utilize those systems (at least on purpose) when training. So I am learning to be creative and figuring out how to ask the horse for trot and canter in this new paradigm. With Tarot, I had to be a thousandfold more careful, because of his past learning. He had only experienced trot and canter in his previous life during a training scenario in two ways:

When he bolted away in escape from handlers, hoof care professionals and his few times under saddle.

When the farrier came and he was round-penned (forced to trot and canter) until he was so exhausted they were able to work on a few feet because he was too tired to resist. In essence, sustained, effortful movement was used to punish avoidance behavior.

For the last six years, we have worked in the walk to avoid increasing his arousal and to avoid triggering memories of how afraid he used to be. Motor patterns, specific co-ordinations and postures are often classically conditioned with the emotional states that accompany them. In his past, his energy was used pathologically, meaning, his energy was used against him to induce exhaustion to prevent him from offering any behavior at all. In a sense, his energy expression was weaponized against him. In that way, people could handle his body despite his lack of consent. A constructive use of energy is to use it to empower the animal to run away if scared, allow them to grow stronger and more balanced and to teach them to move to earn primary reinforcers, extrinsic or intrinsic. I was very worried that all expressions of increased energy over a walk had been poisoned by his history. But, I also knew that before we really began ridden work in earnest, it was important he develop a new relationship to his energy. Before it’s safe or wise to ride, I have to know Tarot can walk and trot during training sessions and stay calm, focused and engaged. There is no question that he already experiences movement for the joy of it in the pasture. He trots, canters, rears, leaps and gallops up and down his lane, playing with the geldings in the adjacent lane. But my job was to change the old conditioning of movement around people from negative to positive. This was a completely discrete scenario.

This last fall, as we worked in the arena more and more and he became increasingly comfortable, he began to offer a really open and free walk with a lot of energy. I could feel that the trot was just below the surface, but I knew that the way I suggested trot to him would have to be with the utmost consideration..

I chose mirroring.

Horses mirror each other all the time, naturally. Just watch a herd of horses running and watch how they all turn at the exact same moment, no one so much as touching a hair on the other. Their sensitivity to each other’s movement is exquisite. Through our in-hand and liberty work, Tarot has been reinforced for mirroring movement with me over and over. It wasn’t out of line to assume he could make changes to his own gait based on changes I made in my body. The first time I tried, I brought my energy (and my knees) up way too high and he stopped short, threw his head in the air and snorted. Ok, too much. I re-established the energetic walk on a high rate of reinforcement and tried again. This time I rolled my shoulders forward, leaned my torso a bit out over my feet and “fell” foot to foot in a trot on my forehand. Presto! After a brief head shake, Tarot moved into a quiet, cadenced trot by my side. Click! He watched me with a touch of vigilance, but was able to

Me falling on my forehand and Tarot offering trot.

offer trot four more times that session. After that, trot was definitely on the table. He took the step that many of my horses do which was to begin offering trot all the time, even uncued. Of course, I accepted and reinforced it. Movement is good for him and offered movement is a sure sign the behavior is under the control of positive reinforcement.

A few weeks later, after some time off, Tarot and I went hiking in the huge farm field behind our barn. I really had no expectations beside exploring in the snow and getting some healthy exercise together. But Tarot had learned trot was a behavior that paid off. Over and over, as long as the footing was good he offered trot. Loose, in a field with no equipment he chose to hike with me and to offer the behavior he had learned in the arena. In the video below, you can see us heading toward home, Tarot trotting next to me, confident and relaxed. Movement as a road to reinforcement, constructional. The switch had flipped, quite quickly.

I no longer imagine there are any real limits with Tarot. There is only the time I am able to put in, the thoughtfulness of my plan and observation, and the reinforcement history we have built together. We are doing things together today that four years ago were a clear impossibility. It’s the long game, changing old responses by layering in skill after skill. You have to look at every aspect of your horse’s behavior. Assess their comfort. If they aren’t comfortable, go back. Go back. Go back. Teach another behavior to deepen their comfort, then another. Encircle the horse’s tension with roads to relaxation.This deep, detailed work is, for me, both a daily apology for the way humans have failed to listen to horses and a dazzling meditation on subtle emotional thresholds. I can go to Tarot and say,”Is this real magic or just an an illusion?” And he will laugh and gallop away or stay and join in the conversation. Real magic always yields engagement.